Mariah Arellano

Newman Elementary 
February 18, 2020 
4th observation 
Lesson 1 of unit plan
Grade level: 4th
Approximate length of time: 60 minutes
Curriculum areas: Language arts and science 
Objectives: 
Utah State Core: 
Language Arts: 
 Reading: Informational Text Standard 5: Describe the overall structure (e.g.,
chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or
information in a text or part of a text.
Social Studies: 
 Standard 3: Students will understand the roles of civic life, politics, and government in
the lives of Utah citizens. 
o Objective 1: Describe the responsibilities and rights of individuals in a
representative government as well as in the school and community.

Personal objectives: 
 Students will be aware of the government. 
 Students will understand the relationship between cause and effect. 
 Students will be aware of their rights and responsibilities 

Essential questions: 
 Why do we need rules or laws? 
 What kinds of rules are necessary for learning, living, and playing together in school? 
 How does the government maintain order and protect people’s freedom? 
 Why do we need government?

Enduring understandings or objectives: 

 Students will understand how to identify cause and effect within a text. 
 Students will be able to use a cause and effect organizer. 
 Students will be able to identify the role the government plays in our lives. 
 Students will recognize how the rules and laws affect our everyday lives. 

Materials: 
 Two buckets
 Ball
 Wonders literacy book 
 Cause and effect organizer

Accommodations: 
 Pre-made graphic organizers 
 Work in partners 
 Vocabulary words written 
 Class reading 
Phase 1: Exploration and explanation 10 minutes 
Guess my rules game: 5 minutes 
 The teacher divides the class into two teams and explains to the students that they will
play a game and must guess the rules.
 Each team can score a goal by putting the ball through the space marked at their scoring
end.  Only the teacher knows the rules; the teacher will not explain the rules and the
students cannot ask what they are. When they break a rule, the students have to sit
down. The aim of the game is for the students to score a goal without breaking the rules;
the students’ task is to work out what the rules are so that they don’t break them. 
 The rules are: Everyone can play the game, only girls can score, no-one is allowed to
move with the ball they have to pass it, the goal is to get the ball in the basket. 

Discussion: 5 minutes 
 What did you think about the game? Was it good? Bad? Fair? How did you know that
there were some rules?  How did you feel about not knowing what the rules were? “Why
do we need rules in school?” The major criteria in terms of “equality”, “participation”,
“fairness” and “respect” should be on the blackboard at the end of the session.
 Sit down in a circle and talk about the game.  Talk about if it was difficult to play a game
that had no rules, or the rules were not stated.  Why was it difficult?  
 Talk about how we also have rules in school, the US, and in life in general.  We are
going to read a story about a world with no rules.  
Read aloud: 10 minutes  
 Have students grab their wonders literacy book and turn to page 238.  Explain that we
are going to read a story about a world with no rules to see a glimpse of what the world
might look like if there were no rules and why we need our government. 
 Reading through the first time, we are only reading to familiarize the story but tell
students they are looking for what happens when there are no rules.  What are the
consequences of whether they are good or bad?    
 We will then head back to our desks to discuss more of the cause and effect.  
 Have students take turns reading each paragraph as a whole class.  
Text structure: 5 minutes 
 Explain that authors use text structures to organize the information in a text.  When
explaining events, procedures, ideas, or concepts, they may use a cause-and-effect text
structure to present information that explains how or why something happens. 
 A cause is why something happens
 An effect is what happens as a result 
 To find a cause-and-effect relationship, students should look for an event or action that
causes something to happen.  Then students can identify the effect, or what happens as
a result.  
 Some signal words and phrases when looking for cause and effect are “because, so,
since, and as a result.”
 Sometimes cause-and-effect relationships occur in a chain with each cause and effect
bringing about a related cause and effect.  For example, a row of dominoes being
knocked over. 
Cause and effect: 5 minutes
  As a class we will go back to our desks and read through the first paragraph “A strange
morning.”  As a class, we will find causes and their effects of not having rules and write
them down in our chart.  
 In the chart notice how the arrow shows us that the effect happens because of the
cause. We don't have the effect first then the cause. 
 We should find 3 causes and effects within the first paragraph.  

Transition to phase 2: Review phase 1 concepts/explain directions for phase 2

I want you to work with your neighbor to find the cause and effects of the second paragraph. 
Remember, a cause is why something happens and an effect is what happens as a result. You
should have at least 3 causes and effects from the second paragraph.  If you finish, show me
and then you can try the third paragraph on your own.

Phase 2: Guided practice/individually differentiated instruction: (10 minutes) 

Students will work in partners to find the relationships of cause and effect within the
second paragraph.  I will walk around and scaffold as needed.

Transition to phase 3: Review concepts taught in phase 1/ explain directions for

phase 3. 
Now that you have had some practice with cause and effect, I want to see if you can
find the causes and effects on your own in the third paragraph.  This one might be a
little more tricky because we are getting back to reality and you might have to dive
deeper. You might think of what laws we have in place and what effect that has on us. 
For example, we live in a democracy which means we have the privilege of voting for
the people that we want to run the country. We have laws to protect us.  

Phase 3: Independent practice/assessment 10 minutes

This might take students a little longer to do because the clues are not as evident.  They
have to think about the real world and how the laws affect us.  

Assessment:  We will continue working on the cause and effect strategy as well as discussing
rights and responsibilities throughout the unit.  For this lesson, I am only looking to see if
students see the relationship between cause and effect. I also want to assess if they are
starting to see how rules play a role in our lives.  I will be assessing students throughout the
process based on their answers but then i will look at their causes and effect chart at the end to
see the big picture.  
 Cause and Effect

Name: ________________________________________

 Signal words: because, so, as a result, since

Cause Effect
Why something happens What happens as a result
Example:
Without rules You don’t have to go to school